How to turn off the reviewing, editing, and view feature?

Current Channel dropped today. The Viewing Button has disappeared! But they don't mention in the the Update notes. BUT they say:We often roll out features (and sometimes even fixes) to Current over a period of time. If you don’t see something described below right away, you can expect it soon.

Can anyone confirm that the Editing/Viewing button has disappeared?

I've just updated 3 machines (1 had the option, the other 2 didn't) to Version 2212 Build 16.0.15928.20198 (interestingly the Build shows 20198 at the end in the Account details and in control panel, but if you click on the About Word or About Outlook button the Build shows as 20196).

The one that had the Editing, Previewing, Viewing option still has it after the update.

So, no change!

Just in case Chris - the Current Channel, not the Current Channel (Preview)? - both have the same build numbers.

And you opened Word a couple of document a few times?

The answer it wrong - the message that says she does not have permission is not correct, Just because the file is protected by "ready-only" from accidental delete or overwrite does not mean she does not have permission to edit the file if she chooses to do so. If you could examine the properties and acls on her file you would see what I say is true. The problem is this new "feature" in word which disables the basic functionality of how word has worked for the last 25 years of its existence. Until now, if you opened a read only document you could make changes to the text loaded into memory and decide later what to do with it. That is the way almost all programs work on windows, both now and for the last 30 years. I am amazed that Microsoft is not embarrassed that one of their flagship products has such a glaring mistake in such a top level message.

I am also having the same issue with this. To be very specific about this issue:

Not all of our users are having this issue.

A user has read-only access to a Word Document.

When the user opens the Word Document - it opens in this "Viewing" mode which is indicated in the top right hand corner. You cannot make any changes to the Word Document. If you try to do so, on the very bottom of the Word document, there is a bar that says "You can't make this change because the selection is locked"

Previously - you are allowed to make changes to the Word Document however, you will need to use the "Save As" function and select a different folder destination. This has always been the case for many years and it doesn't make sense on why this is a thing now. It is such an unnecessary "feature" that serves no purpose.

I have updated to the current channel which was released on 1/26/2023 and this is still an issue. I do not understand what is the point of this. It makes no sense.

Please do comment saying "Check if the file or folder has the read-only box" checked. This never mattered in actually editing the file. This only mattered when you were trying to save it.